07 April 2014

Review: English Men of Science by Francis Galton

PDF eBook, 270 pages
Published 1874
Read November 2012
English Men of Science: Their Nature and Nurture
by Francis Galton

Francis Galton mailed surveys to a bunch of scientists to find out if interest in science was due to nature or nurture. He decides nature, but fails to account for class in any meaningful sense, which seems like a major foul-up. He may have invented both statistics and surveys, but judging by this book, he was not very good at it, probably because he also invented eugenics. You're better off reading The Victorian Scientist: The Growth of a Profession by Jack Meadows, which summarizes all the bits that are useful to a modern-day scholar.

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